Hammer songs rose from the cog-yards they passed as the trio climbed the hill. The call of hours droned on through the air, swallowing the sound of metal falling on metal. The square compounds covered the Hill of Brass. Each cog-yard was a squad space open to the sky. Walls and buildings ringed each yard, all made of the pale stone that came from the hill itself. Each yard had a single arch that opened onto an alley. Curtains of coloured fabric hung across each opening, their hems weighted with broken cogs. Azure, crimson, saffron, indigo and emerald twitched and rippled.
Idris caught glimpses of the spaces beyond. Men and women sat cross-legged in rows in front of low workbenches. Collars of brass machinery circled their hunched shoulders. Manipulator tools, arc torches, micro cutters arched over their heads, in ever-shifting cowls of metal limbs. Each of them had a whirring bionic lens in place of their left eye. The bright wheels of cogs glinted on the workbenches, each one a tiny flower of hand-cut brass. Cyber-hawks wheeled above, their jewelled eyes the eyes of the guild masters. Thousands of cogs were made every day by the hands of these people on this one hill. It was all they had constructed since before records recalled. Most went off world to play tiny roles in machines that the hunched figures in the cog-yards could not imagine.
Idris had just stepped out of the way of three servitors carrying ingots on their backs when her fingers twitched. Threads of shock flicked up her arms, and she tasted bitter iron over the lingering honey of the cake.
‘Did you feel that?’ she said.
Argento nodded, his steps quickening. Covenant closed in behind the inquisitor’s shoulder. Idris felt another ghost of pain flick up her limbs.
No more time for subtlety,+ she sent.
She began to run. A woman with an armful of scrolls stepped from a door in front of her. Idris jumped without pause, kicked off the alley wall and was past the woman before she realised what had happened. Covenant and Argento were two strides ahead of her. Eyes and faces turned towards them now.
A group of men stepped to bar their path. All of them wore the leather and copper scale armour of the law-keepers. She saw sparks wreath the batons in their hands. Argento hit the first one, without slowing down. The man spun through the air, a cry hissing from his lips as he tumbled into his comrades. One of them surged back to his feet faster than the rest. Covenant struck the man in the chest with the flat of his palm. The man grunted and cannoned backwards, air gasping from his mouth. Idris leapt over the fallen bodies and ran on after Argento, Covenant now matching her stride for stride.
Shouts of confusion chased them up between the buildings. At the edge of her perception she could feel the minds of a forming crowd, and beyond it the ghost shadow of another mind moving through the aether like a Leviathan through deep water. Something had sensed them and was dragging a mob after them by pouring anger into the confused minds of the people they passed.
It’s getting stronger,+ came Covenant’s thought voice. +She must be waking.+
‘Here,’ called Argento, turning a corner. His hood had fallen away. An ash-grey beard framed his sharp face. Fine wrinkles textured his tanned skin. His grey hair was drawn back in a ponytail that hung down his neck. A brief look would have placed him in vigorous middle age, but his eyes showed his true age. He was one of the most brilliant and terrifying human beings that Idris had ever met.
Idris spun round the corner just behind the inquisitor. Covenant was beside her. She could hear the sound of running feet coming up the alley in their wake. The alley before them was a dead end. A painted metal door sat in the far wall. Argento drew a pistol from under his robes as he slowed. It armed with a whine. Covenant had his bolt pistol in his hand. Idris drew the paired knives from the base of her back and the dart casters snapped from her forearms to her wrists. She and Covenant ran past Argento, hit the wall either side of the door, and braced. Argento paused for a second, pistol levelled, and then fired. A white-hot cone shot from his pistol. The air screamed, and then the door was gone, molten metal and the reek of burning paint filling the air.
The cult was of the type that spawned, grew, and vanished in their billions across the Imperium. It did not even have a name. Most of those who lived on the Hill of Brass worshipped the Emperor in the form of the Giver of Plenty, a gilded fragment of his divinity that rewarded labour, duty and commerce. The greatest sign of his blessing was wealth, and piety was marked by the tithing of wealth to the Temple of Plenty. The creed dominated the planet of Frell, though the piety of the Hill of Brass was noted across the world. A few others of off-world origins followed different versions of the Imperial creed, but they were outliers, accepted, but apart. It was a robust tradition with only one half-buried strand of belief that lay towards the edge of orthodoxy: the soothsayers.
All fortune followed from the Emperor. Every guild master that made a fortune, or turned a loss, was raised high or cast low, was so because the Emperor had ordained that they be so. The Emperor of Silver and Gold was the wind and weather of commerce. All on the Hill of Brass accepted this. What they would also admit to believing amongst those they knew was that someone gifted by the Emperor could read the direction of future fortunes. Traders, magnates, and even makers who had saved enough for the offering, would go to small shrines and listen to the words of raving women, withered men and blind crones.
Would their endeavours succeed? Should they sell what they made to this broker or that? Would the cost of ingots from the southern continent rise or fall? All these questions and more were put to the Oracles of Plenty, and their answers treated like the words of saints. For thousands of years this had happened, and the Hill of Brass had seen nothing more divine than a lucky coincidence of prediction. But then, through luck or providence, something close to a true saint had appeared amongst them.
The metal door vanished in fire. Idris could feel the swelling bubble of the saint’s psychic presence close by, shot with raw emotion and power. She reached out and met the telepathic presence of both Argento and Covenant as they reached for her. Surface thoughts and sensations meshed.
Covenant went through the door. The edge of his robe touched the glowing metal and began to burn. Idris followed, eyes sweeping high as Covenant’s aim tracked low. Across the telepathic bond, she felt what he saw blur into her own sight. The space beyond the door was a small courtyard ringed by a cloister of pillars, a covered walkway running above their tops. A small, square pool of green water sat in the centre of the courtyard. Pink flowers floated on the surface. Sinuous shapes moved in the clouded water.
Gunfire roared from above the cloister. Stone exploded as hard rounds chewed the ground just behind Idris. She jerked to the side. Covenant fired. The double boom of his bolt pistol swallowed the buzz of passing bullets. Clouds of shrapnel exploded across the far side of the courtyard. The gunfire slackened. Idris reached out with her mind, and felt the shape of minds above and in front of her.
Three,+ she sent. +Two on walkway, one behind the pillars to the left.+
Understood,+ replied Covenant and stepped out of cover. Rounds poured down at him. His image shivered, and suddenly the air around him was a blur of sparks. Rounds flashed to molten fire. Covenant walked forward unhurried, his face still. Idris noticed the vein pulsing in his temple. He was pouring all his will into the aetheric shield around him. Effort bled across the mental link between them. He would not be able to keep it going for more than a few seconds.
Idris spun out of cover. She felt the surface thoughts of the shooters above her. Impulses to pull the triggers of their guns formed in their minds and began to flare along nerves. She slammed her will into their minds. It was enough to freeze them for a second. Her hands came up. Darts were released from the casters strapped to her wrists. She had not aimed by eye, but by the second sight of her mind. The darts hit their targets just as the delayed impulses reached the shooters’ hands. They fired as they died. A sheet of shimmering force slammed into place in front
of Idris. The rounds flattened and melted a hand-span from her head. She glanced at Covenant, in time to see him put three bolt rounds into where the last of the three shooters had been.
Behind them the sound of the mob pouring up the alleys towards them rose. Argento backed through the door, pulling a grenade from his waist. Idris could feel his will pull them wordlessly forwards.
Gas,+ he sent. Idris clamped her mouth shut. The filter plugs in her nostrils wheezed as she shucked a breath. Argento threw the grenade. It exploded as it spun down the alley. Pink fumes billowed out as a wall of running figures rounded the corner. The first rank met the spreading gas. They took two strides and dropped, muscles twitching, air gasping from lungs.
Go,+ sent Argento.
Door, far end, left corner,+ sent Covenant.
Idris moved towards the door. Behind them Argento moved close to Idris.
A man rushed into the courtyard, bent-backed and swathed in the umber robes of a life-bound servant. He held a sceptre of authority in his hand. His eyes were wide, mouth opening to shout a challenge. Covenant’s telekinetic blow flipped the man off his feet like a leaf caught by a gust of wind, and pinned him to the floor. The man’s mouth stayed open, tongue clamped in place by invisible force.
Your turn,+ said Covenant as he reached the door leading out of the courtyard and crouched beside it.
Idris pushed her thoughts out and into the pinned man’s skull. Fear, anger and confusion rose from his mind in a churning cloud of emotion. She punched through it. The man’s back arched. Blood trickled from his nose and froze. She normally preferred to use more delicacy when invading a mind, but here and now she did not have the luxury of time. She bored down through the strata of his identity and memories in the time it took her to take two paces.
He is a servant,+ she said. +He serves the saint’s cult. There are ten other servants in this compound and five members of the cult. The sanctuary is underground. He has never been inside it. It is guarded…+ The thread of her thoughts faltered.
Stillness…
The creatures moving in the courtyard pond were frozen beneath the surface, the water a green mirror to the dawn sky above. A sudden quiet had fallen, the sounds of distant shouts and the call of hours gone.
That is not good, is it?+ sent Idris.
No,+ sent Covenant. +It’s unlikely to be.+
Blue sparks ran up the pillars around the courtyard.
Move!+ sent Argento. The force of the sending jerked Idris’ muscles forwards. Covenant swung into the opening of the door off the courtyard. Idris went with him, shoulder to shoulder. The space beyond was a landing to a spiral stair. A corridor led off to the left, the stairs curving down into the dark. Curtains hung across the doorways that lined the corridor. The pressure of stillness clamped tighter. Idris pushed her senses out, feeling for other minds… and touched something that felt like a wall of ice.
The hangings billowed inwards.
Frost flashed across the ceiling and floor.
The stone floor exploded. Dust and rock shards fountained up. Idris’ mind recoiled. The presence boiling through the corridor rammed her own thoughts back into her head.
‘Down the stairs!’ called Argento. ‘Fast!’
Covenant started down the stairs. Gunfire poured from the darkness to greet him. He fired back, squeezing off a bolt-round with every step.
A cloud of debris filled the corridor, white and blue sparks flaring in its core. Argento faced it. Idris saw the subtle shift in his posture, control and calm spreading through his limbs. The debris cloud flexed, as though a vast mouth was inhaling. Idris leapt down the stairs after Covenant. She saw the debris cloud blast down the corridor. Splinters of broken stones stabbed towards Argento… and stopped. Light screamed through the air. Argento flinched. He staggered, his posture bending as though under a vast weight. Colours bleached from the air.
In front of Idris, Covenant fired the last round from his pistol, stripped the magazine, pulled a fresh one from his waist, slotted it into place and was pulling the trigger before Idris’ heart had beaten twice.
‘Cover,’ she called. Covenant dropped to one knee. The line of his fire shifted to open a narrow passage between his gunfire and the stair wall. Idris tensed and leapt down, hitting the wall and kicking off. She landed on a lower step, and the open space at the bottom of the stairs was in front of her. A muzzle flash drew the shape of two figures in off-white robes crouched five metres away. They saw her, and bullets sawed towards her. The dart launchers on her wrists loosed and reloaded with a purr of gears. One shooter tumbled back, breath and blood gurgling in his throat. The other raked more fire towards Idris. A snap of muscles and she was across the space between them. The knife in her right hand hooked over the barrel of the gun as she slashed her left blade through his neck. She felt blood gush over her. The stink of meat and organs filled her nose. She pivoted back, dropping to the side, eyes sweeping the space around her. Covenant came down the last steps of the staircase behind her.
The space before them was a wide forest of darkness and stone pillars. Cracked tiles covered the floor. The only light was the crackling glow from the spiral stairs behind her. She took a step forwards.
On the ground behind her, the blood-soaked corpses stood up. Blood ice formed and cracked as they moved. Pale light spun in their eyes.
Why?+ The word exploded in Idris’ head, and she was falling, blinding pain drowning her world with blood and gold. +Why can’t you let me have peace?+
‘A saint?’ Idris had asked. Argento had looked up from the velvet-covered tabletop. In his hands the crystal-wafer cards gleamed as they fanned and merged. ‘How can someone be a potential saint? Surely they are either touched by the divine or not?’
Argento finished shuffling the crystal cards and set the deck down in front of him. The backs of the crystal-wafers flickered with images of serpents and eagles coiling and soaring around each other. Covenant caught her eye from across the table. He wore red robes, with a heavy hood, but no other adornment. She read the admonishment in the glance; we are the pupils, it said. He is our master. This is a lesson, not a chance to challenge the knowledge of one who knows more than us.
She frowned, not trying to hide her disagreement. Argento looked from the cards to each of them. He wore a black cassock and red surplice, and a crystal-threaded psy-hood sat over his iron-grey hair like a skull cap.
‘The universe does not split into simple categories. The masses of humanity need simplicity – light and dark, good and evil, saints and witches. These things all exist, but so does everything in between. For every light that burns bright there are more that burn only dimly, or for too short a time. For every saint that the Emperor imbues with his divinity there are others that are touched but cannot bear the burden of revelation, that fly close to the sun but fall.’
‘How can we tell the difference?’ she asked.
He gave a brief smile.
‘We can’t, but we can try to find them before they either die or are consumed by what they are.’
‘And we either execute them or…’ said Idris, her eyes drawn to the deck of crystal cards.
‘Or we help them become what they need to be in the service of humanity,’ said Argento.
‘What does that mean?’
Argento gave a small smile that somehow carried a burden of time and failure and hope.
‘Salvation,’ he said.
Idris’ thoughts turned over with sudden clarity. She had served Argento for several years. Some of that time had been at his side, some of it with others, some of it on her own. There had been training: mental, physical and esoteric. There had been missions and lessons both obvious and obscure. There had been blood, and death, and moments when she had thought that she was going to die or go insane. She had survived, and as far as she could tell she was still sane. Covenant had served the inquisitor for longer
, but not much. Their service and learning under Argento followed parallel tracks that sometimes crossed or diverged. This moment was the first time that felt like the beginning of true learning, as though here and now she was crossing a boundary into a world that worked towards truths that she had not known before.
‘How do we find these saints?’ asked Covenant.
‘That, my apprentices, is the first thing for you to understand.’
Argento closed his eyes. The air around him became taut. Idris felt the static charge of highly controlled psychic activity ripple up the inside of her skin. The inquisitor picked up the crystal cards, and spread them across the velvet-covered table. A pattern grew arc by arc, line by line, until the tabletop was covered. The backs of each card flickered, and then the serpents and eagles of the design were flowing from card to card, as though each of them was a small window onto a single moving image. A card sat on the table in front of each of Argento, Covenant and Idris. These were their signifiers that marked their place within the pattern of events.
‘Idris,’ said Argento, and his breath was white in the air. He nodded at the card in front of her. She reached out. Pins and needles spread up her arm as she flicked the crystal-wafer over. The image of a woman in red robes and a silver mask formed in the crystal. Claws and serpents flowed in the air around her. In her left hand she held a candle, its flame haloed with golden rays of light. ‘The Light Bearer,’ said Argento.
He looked at Covenant, who turned over his signifier. A man on a throne looked up from the face of the card. An executioner’s mask hid his face, and a hammer sat beneath his left hand, a book in his right. ‘The High Priest,’ said Argento. Idris waited for him to turn his own card over, but instead he reached for the card at the centre of the table. It turned over on its edge before he touched it.
Divination - John French Page 26